The Last Panther

by Todd Mitchell

  It had been Kiri’s intention to leave the room as soon as the hallway was clear, but she still had no idea where to go and she found the boy’s friendly tone to be unexpectedly calming. The panic she’d felt in the hallway started to ease. Without meaning to, she stepped closer to look at the models. Some reminded her of the ruins, only much taller and not ruined. There were doors, ledges, windows, and other tiny details painted on them with incredible care. Kiri figured it must have taken the boy a long time to create them, and for what? To destroy them with a stuffed animal?

  “Why?” she asked.

  “For a vid, of course.” He nodded to his vid screen. “I make vids. Basho thrasher ones. On-screen it looks like a monster bunny is crushing everything. Funny, huh? I made one vid of a baby zombie panda destroying my school. You don’t have cancer, do you?”

  Kiri cocked her head, perplexed by the strange boy’s questions.

  “You don’t,” decided the boy. “This is the cancer ward. All the kids here have cancer and lose their hair, but you have plenty of hair. Still, you’ve been scratched by the cosmic fingernail. I can tell.”

  “The cosmic what?”

  “The cosmic fingernail. It scratched you,” said the boy. He leaned forward and touched the scar on her cheek. “Right there!”

  The devi mark on Kiri’s cheek tingled. She’d expected the boy’s finger to be cold, like everything else here, but it wasn’t. His touch felt surprisingly warm, and that warmth spread through her.

  She stepped back, startled, and felt the scar on her cheek. “This is from a sea turtle bone,” she said.

  “A bone might have made the cut, but the cosmic fingernail caused it,” replied the boy. “My mom says that sometimes, when the cosmic fingernail scratches you, it’s because the cosmic hand is giving you something. It hurts, but the deeper the scratch, the more it gives you.”

  Kiri studied the boy, wondering if he knew anything about sea turtles and devi. “What does it give you?” she asked.

  “A glow—that’s what it looks like to me. And yours is bright violet and pretty,” said the boy. “I only like talking to people who’ve been scratched by the cosmic fingernail. They’re more interesting than ordinary people. I have a few friends at school who’ve never been scratched at all and they’re very boring. But you’re not like that. Not in the least.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I told you, I have a sense about these things. I’m Apson, by the way.” The boy thrust a bony hand toward her. “Everyone calls me Ap because of my name, and because I scored highest on my school’s aptitude tests. All that means, though, is that I have to do more homeschool problems. You can call me Ap, too.”

  Kiri stared at his hand.

  “It’s okay. I’m not contagious,” said Ap. “It’s the chemicals in the water that made me sick. That’s what my father says, but the city officials don’t believe him.”

  The boy kept holding his hand out until Kiri raised her own hand to shake his. Even though he was a waller and the strangest person she’d ever met, she felt at ease around him.

  His smile widened as he took her hand and shook it up and down in greeting. “There. Now we’re friends and you can come back to my room anytime and we can play Toxic War Toads. But if a nurse catches you here, you’ll get a demerit and you won’t be able to go to the treasure chest. I don’t care about the treasure chest, though. I’ve been here so long that I already have every stuffed animal. See?” He nodded to the foot of his bed, where dozens of fuzzy creatures were arranged.

  One of the stuffed animals was yellow with a long, spotted neck and thin legs. Another resembled an orange cat with black stripes. There was also a white horse with a horn in the center of its head, and a tawny, big-pawed cat that reminded Kiri of the panther cubs.

  Once-were creatures, she thought. They’re all once-were creatures.

  “You can take one if you like,” said Ap.

  Kiri picked up a small green creature with blue plastic eyes, a soft round head, four floppy legs, and a smooth brown shell on its back. It reminded her of the leatherback turtle Charro had netted.

  “That’s Bodhi,” said Ap. “Go on, take him. He’ll bring you good luck.”

  Kiri stuffed the little cloth turtle into her pocket, grateful to have this reminder of the ocean. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve made vids of them destroying all sorts of things,” said Ap. “I make lots of vids because I don’t have to go to school. That’s the best part of being sick, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to school.”

  Ap’s eyes widened. Kiri supposed, if he’d had eyebrows, they would have been raised, but all that happened was his forehead wrinkled.

  “You’ve never gone to school?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s flip!” His missing eyebrows shot up even farther, adding another wrinkle to his forehead. “You must be very sick. What do you do all day?”

  Kiri squeezed the stuffed turtle in her pocket, picturing what her life had been like before she’d been brought here. She desperately wanted to smell the ocean again. Not the claustrophobic fake ocean in the hallway, but the real ocean, with its seaweed, stinging jellies, and crashing waves. “I go to the beach to collect samples for my da,” she said. “And I dig for sand fleas, and fish, and get palm nuts for Snowflake, my rat. At least, I used to.”

  “Wow. You’re really off ward,” said Ap.

  “Off ward?”

  “You know, the part of the facility where you’re supposed to be.”

  Kiri recalled Sonia mentioning a ward when she’d talked about the panther cubs. “Do you know where the animal ward is?”

  “I know everything here. And you don’t—I see that now. Are you even from this city?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I knew it! You’re from one of the floating cities, aren’t you? I saw a vid about them. They’re like big square boats, and the ground constantly moves up and down. And they have buildings that go underwater like skyscrapers in reverse, with tubes that connect them—just like the vista screens in the hallway, only real.”

  “I’m not from any city,” said Kiri.

  “You have to be from some city. Everyone’s from a city.”

  “I’m not.”

  Ap looked perplexed. Did he even know that fugees existed?

  “Then where do you live?” he asked.

  Kiri opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. Where did she live now? She couldn’t go back to the swamp, and she might never be able to return to the fugee village. “I don’t know,” she said. “Nowhere, I guess.”

  “That means you’re No Name from No Where!” said Ap. “Because you didn’t tell me your name before.”

  Kiri smiled despite herself. She considered telling Ap her name. He was the first person she’d met here whom she felt comfortable talking to. In fact, now that she thought about it, there did seem to be a sort of inviting glow around him, so maybe he’d been scratched by the cosmic fingernail, too.

  Ap pushed a button that made his bed tilt up farther. Then he folded down the railing, swung his feet off the bed, and nudged a chair with wheels on it toward him with his foot. His legs were as skinny as a bird’s.

  “You can push me to the hall,” he said once he’d slid into the wheeled chair. “Put that on,” he added, pointing to a blue coat hanging on a hook. “That way people will think you’re a visitor and not a patient who’s gone off ward and needs a demerit. Now, let’s go.”

  “Go where?” asked Kiri.

  “To the animal ward. That’s what you wanted to find, right?”

  They drifted on the track to the main hallway. Ap’s sea person looked huge and ridiculously muscular compared with him. It was funny seeing such a big, strong figure swim above the small, frail boy in the wheeled chair.

  “I reprogrammed it,” said Ap, nodding to the sea person above him. “He’s the biggest avatar in the facility.”

  Ap’s sea
person grinned and waved at everyone they passed, but none of the real doctors and nurses said anything. Everyone appeared too busy to notice them. On the bright side, no one seemed to care that they were out wandering the halls.

  They entered a small metal room off the main hall with shiny doors that slid open and closed on their own.

  “Most of the upper levels are people wards,” said Ap. “The cool stuff is all underground. That’s where they do research. Levels N4 through N7 are contagious disease wards, so we can’t go there. I bet it’s N3.” He pushed a button on the wall.

  The metal room seemed to drop out from under them. Kiri scrambled for something to hold on to, but Ap wasn’t the least bit alarmed. After several seconds of falling, the room stopped moving and the door opened. The floor didn’t move, so Kiri pushed Ap’s wheeled chair into a short, plain hallway that ended at a set of locked double doors. ANIMAL WARD B was written on a red sign above the doors.

  “Told you I knew everything,” said Ap. “Now what?”

  “Now we go in.” Kiri tried to push open the doors, but they were locked.

  “Typical,” said Ap. “Let’s go to the elder ward. They have a game room with total immersion bubble screens. It’s flip, although the controllers are sticky.”

  Kiri noticed a keypad next to the doors, like the one that had been on the machine behind her bed. She punched in the code the nurse had used.

  3-6-9-3

  The doors swung open.

  “Basho!” said Ap, raising his nonexistent eyebrows again.

  The hall on the other side was dull and sterile, with bright overhead lights and no vid images on the walls, but it smelled completely different. Beneath the usual fake-flowery scent were wild, lush, animal smells—hair, dirt, blood, and cedar, all mixed together, with the lingering odor of ammonia and dung.

  A rush of air pushed Kiri’s hair back as she walked through the doors. Then came a cacophony of chirps, mews, and barks. There was music being piped in, too—wordless waller music, like the sort her da listened to.

  “Wow! Chickens!” said Ap, pointing to a sign on one door. “And bunnies!” he added, pointing to another door across the hallway. “I’ve never seen a real bunny. Or a chicken.”

  A man dressed head to toe in a white hooded jumpsuit spotted them. “This is a restricted area. You’re not allowed here.”

  Kiri looked at Ap. He’d tensed and gone quiet, just like she had when the floor had dropped in the metal room. She knew he was scared, but this might be their only chance.

  “I’m here to see the panther cubs,” she said with every ounce of authority she could muster.

  The man straightened. “How do you know about those?”

  “Because they’re mine. I’m the one who found them,” said Kiri.

  More people drifted into the hall from the same direction the man had come.

  “Kiribati?” said one figure. It wasn’t until he tugged off the white hood covering his head that Kiri recognized her da. “You shouldn’t be here. This area’s strictly off-limits.”

  “It’s all right, Martin,” said a smaller figure. She pushed back her hood and a cascade of dark, curly hair sprang out. “She can stay,” said Sonia. “Isn’t it time she learned what you really do?”

  A nurse came to escort Ap back to his room. Kiri didn’t want him to go. Even though she’d known him only a short time, she already considered him a friend—the only friend she had here.

  Before Ap left, he took Kiri’s hand and squinted at her, as if trying to figure something out. “I’ll see you again,” he determined. Then the nurse wheeled him away.

  “Some of us refer to this as ‘the Ark,’ ” said Sonia, after the door clicked shut behind Ap. “I prefer to think of it as a seed bank for a better future.”

  As Sonia talked, she led Kiri and Martin down the hall. They passed rooms from which various animal smells and sounds emerged—cedar shavings and the musk of damp fur colliding with chickens clucking and the distant echo of a dog barking.

  “There’s a story I often think about that helps explain the importance of the work we’re doing at Gen Tech. Would you like to hear it?” asked Sonia.

  Kiri studied the doors they passed for clues of what might be on the other side. Each door was labeled with a single, strange word. Kiri struggled to read them.

  CANIDAE.

  RANIDAE.

  DIPODIDAE.

  CEBIDAE.

  NATALIDAE.

  A few doors had small windows that Kiri glanced through, but all she saw were labs full of vid screens and other equipment.

  “It’s a true story, about a place called Yellowstone,” continued Sonia. “It was a very large, beautiful wilderness area that people traveled from all over the world to see. There were mountains, rivers, valleys, and wetlands there, but despite all the protected land and species, the wilderness was dying. Beetles were killing the pines, and deer overgrazed the valleys. Severe fires swept through the park more frequently, and the ground began to wash away, clogging the rivers with mud. Then the trout began to disappear, as well as animals that fed on trout. The entire ecosystem spiraled toward collapse. You see, the wilderness was missing one thing—an apex predator. In this case, wolves.” Sonia paused and turned to Kiri. “Do you know what a wolf is?”

  “I read stories about them in a book my da gave me,” said Kiri. “They were always the villains.”

  Martin chuckled. He’d been silent for most of the walk, drifting back and letting Sonia do the talking, but now he spoke. “Those were just fairy tales, Kiribati.”

  “I know that,” said Kiri. “But that was the only book we had on wolves.”

  “It’ll do,” said Sonia. “One thing fairy tales show is how much people feared wolves.” She slowed and cocked her head at Kiri. “Did you know that wolves once roamed this whole continent? They were everywhere, but when settlers first arrived, they saw wolves as their enemies so they tried to hunt and poison them to extinction. Only a small number of wolves survived. Then a few people, scientists mostly, thought it might be good to reintroduce wolves to some of the habitats where they’d once lived.”

  Sonia continued down another hall lined with doors. “By this point, there weren’t many wilderness areas left that could sustain even a small wolf pack. One such place, though, was Yellowstone.”

  “The beautiful, dying wilderness,” said Kiri, to show that she’d been paying attention.

  “Yes.” Sonia smiled at her. “It was an experiment. No one knew what would happen when wolves returned. Some thought they’d kill too many deer. Others thought the wolves would leave the area and prey on livestock. Despite all the opposition, a small breeding population was eventually released. And what happened next, in just a few years, surprised everyone.”

  Sonia paused, letting the suspense grow. Her dark brown eyes seemed to sparkle. Kiri realized that her voice had changed as well, becoming more lilting and musical as she’d gotten into the story. “The wolves not only hunted deer,” she said, “they set off a trophic cascade that changed the entire ecosystem and reshaped the land itself. Rivers deepened, valleys shifted, and wetlands formed—mostly due to the wolf’s return.”

  “How?” asked Kiri, unable to picture how wolves could change rivers and valleys.

  “Good question,” said Sonia. “The wolves only ate a small percentage of deer in the area, but their presence caused all the herds to move about more to avoid the wolves, and so the deer and elk didn’t overgraze areas as they’d done before. As a result, trees that had been stunted by grazing began to grow tall and strong. And the roots of these trees stabilized the earth and prevented dirt from washing into the rivers. Then the rivers ran deeper and clearer, which was what the trout needed to thrive. And as the rivers deepened and the trees grew, beavers and birds came back.” Sonia looked up, as if she could see the creatures she talked about. “The beavers created dams that led to wetlands where more fish and birds could live. Then hawks, owls, and eagles returned, along with
minks, fishers, and otters—”

  “What are those?” asked Kiri, not recognizing half the animals Sonia had named.

  “They’re…once-were creatures,” said Martin.

  Sonia nodded and turned down another hall. “Suffice it to say, the more species that returned, the healthier the wilderness became. Even the deer became healthier because the wolves preyed on the sick. You see? In just a few decades, the entire landscape was more stable, diverse, and abundant, all because one critical species had returned.”

  “Then what happened?” asked Kiri.

  “Well…” Sonia glanced at Martin.

  “Other factors impacted the area, Kiribati,” said her da. “Most of the species in that wilderness have since died off.”

  “Why?”

  Her da shrugged. “Pollution increased. The climate changed. Pollinators disappeared. Toxins accumulated….There are only so many stressors an ecosystem can take before it collapses.”

  “The point of my story,” said Sonia, “is that every species is connected to other species and to the land itself in ways we barely understand. Losing just a few key species can cause the whole web to unravel. And that’s where we are now—in the midst of the largest die-off of species since the dinosaurs were wiped out sixty-five million years ago. Only now we’re the cause. We’re driving much of life on Earth to extinction.”

  Sonia stopped in front of a door marked FELIDAE. “That’s why the work we’re doing here—the work your father is doing—is so incredibly important. He’s not just collecting specimens. He’s helping preserve entire ecosystems for the future. If we’re going to have any hope of stopping a catastrophic collapse, we need to save all the species we can. Especially apex predators.” She pressed her palm to a panel next to the door and stared at a lens set into the wall. Then, in a stiff voice that had no trace of her musical, storytelling cadence, she said, “Sonia Waterson entering with two guests.”

  The door clicked open and Sonia led them into a narrow room lined with cabinets. “Gen Tech is racing to collect and preserve as many species as possible before they’re gone,” she said. “It’s our hope that by retrieving viable numbers of rare specimens, we might be able to reintroduce populations to the wild someday.”